This dates from 1958, two years after the Louvin Brothers' recording, some 20 years after the recording by the Blue Sky Boys, and over thirty years after the first commercial recording from 1925 by the delightfully-named Arthur Tanner & His Corn Shuckers.

It's the stark simplicity of the song, contrasted with the extraordinary brutality described, that makes it so powerful. There's no explanation, no excuse:

I met a little girl in KnoxvilleA town we all know wellAnd every Sunday eveningOut in her home I'd dwell

We went to take an evening walkAbout a mile from townI picked a stick up off the groundAnd knocked that fair girl down

She fell down on her bended kneesFor mercy she did cryOh, Willie dear, don't kill me hereI'm unprepared to die

She never spoke another wordI only beat her moreUntil the ground around meWithin her blood did flow

I took her by her golden curlsAnd I drug her 'round and 'roundThrowing her into the riverThat flows through Knoxville town

Go down, go down, you Knoxville girlWith the dark and roving eyesGo down, go down, you Knoxville girlYou can never be my bride...

There's an excellent piece here by Paul Slade which looks at the history of the song, tracing it back to 17th Century England when gallows ballads, often claiming to be an authentic record of the killer's last confession or his dying words on the scaffold, were printed out by opportunist publishers to be sold at the site of the execution.

What's missing in the story as it ended up transposed to Knoxville is the obvious background: the poor girl has clearly been knocked up by this man, and she presses him to do the right thing and marry her, taking reponsibility for his child. In response the swine gets out his club and kills her. As such it all makes a kind of horrible sense. It's true that the familiar male justification for rejection and denial - that the girl is a slut who sleeps around, and how does he know he's really the father of the child - is hinted at in the line about the "dark and roving eyes", but apart from that strange note the removal of the matter of the pregnancy, plus that little twist at the end to the effect that he really did love the girl, replaces a fairly standard moral tale with a kind of mystery which makes the song that much darker and more compelling.

October 30, 2014

“If Obama bombs the believers here, we will bomb you there,” Abu Amran told me. We have our Tomahawk missiles too, they said, referring to human beings. Over the last 22 months, I had stopped being surprised when Nusra Front commanders introduced their 8-year-old sons to me by saying, “He will be a suicide martyr someday, by the will of God.” The children participated in the torture sessions. Around the prisons, they wore large pouches with red wires sticking out of them — apparently suicide belts — and sang their “destroy the Jews, death to America” anthems in the hallways. It would be a mistake to assume that only Syrians are educating their children in this manner. The Nusra Front higher-ups were inviting Westerners to the jihad in Syria not so much because they needed more foot soldiers — they didn’t — but because they want to teach the Westerners to take the struggle into every neighborhood and subway station back home. They want these Westerners to train their 8-year-olds to do the same. Over time, they said, the jihadists would carve mini-Islamic emirates out of the Western countries, as the Islamic State had done in Syria and Iraq. There, Western Muslims would at last live with dignity, under a true Quranic dispensation.

The Great Marshal's mysterious disappearance is quickly forgotten as life in North Korea returns to normal. From Richard Lloyd Parry in the Times (£):

North Korea has executed 50 people, including ruling party cadres, for crimes such as watching imported soap operas, according to the South Korean intelligence agency.

South Korean television programmes, smuggled over the border from China, are regarded as gravely subversive in North Korea, where TVs and radios are incapable of picking up foreign broadcasts and most citizens are kept in almost complete ignorance of the outside world.

According to the South Korean national intelligence service, ten officials of the Korean Workers’ party have been shot by firing squad for such crimes this year, as well as for offences such as bribery and “philandering”.

At least one senior military officer was demoted by two ranks for inaccurate artillery fire, according to South Korean members of parliament who were present at a closed intelligence briefing in Seoul.

Meanwhile, as the people go without water, the flow continues uninterrupted at Kim's special waterpark project, despite the fact that no one goes there - especially in the cold weather:

Despite the severe water shortage in North Korea from the spring drought that has even suspended operations at major power plants, the country has been busy supplying water to Pyongyang’s Munsu Waterpark and other leisure facilities rather than to its people, according to a local source. The Munsu Waterpark and Neungra Theme Park are venues widely promoted by the state as “legacies”of its leader Kim Jong Eun.

“We’re not simply talking about your average household, the central district apartments have not even been able to receive a proper supply of water,” a Pyongyang-based source told the Daily NK on Wednesday. “The water from the Taedong River is being supplied first to the theme park or waterpark.”

The severe drought this spring crippled North Korea’s water supply, even disrupting train services. Pyongyang, known as the “revolutionary capital,” which always receives priority when it comes to public resources, has also been struggling with a lag in power and water, according to the source.

This has led to criticism that the state only focuses on promoting Kim Jong Eun’s projects, instead of improving the lives of its people as it vowed the waterpark would help achieve. Since assuming power, Kim has ordered construction of multiple leisure facilities in his effort to build up a “people-friendly” image.

“As the weather gets colder, no one is even visiting these waterparks, but the water supply is the same as in the summer,” the source said. “Summertime operations aside, more people these days are questioning why the park is open at a time like this.”

And, at the BBC, a 21-year-old defector, Yeonmi Park, describes the executions she was forced to witness, her diet of grass and insects, and her eventual escape to China - where, shockingly, the brutality continued as she had to witness her mother's rape.

China's culpability in the survival of the North Korean regime is a long-standing issue; now given new relevance as attempts are made to refer Pyongyang to the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. The Chinese will almost certainly use their UN Security Council veto.

October 29, 2014

Architectural photographer Peter Dazeley was granted access to some of London’s secret and underground locations for his new book Unseen London. Here, from a gallery at PDN, is the main pump room at Crossness Pumping Station, designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette:

Although the outside of Crossness is described as being "in the Romanesque style", there's an undeniable orientalist feel to the elaborate interior decor here.

Its partner on the north side of the Thames in Bazalgette's great Victorian sewage modernisation, the Abbey Mills Pumping Station, is described as Byzantine in construction, but has a definite Moorish feel. Originally it was graced with two minaret-style towers, but these were demolished in 1941 as it was feared that they were too obvious a landmark for German bombers - and, if hit, could have toppled onto the pumping station. Till then a comparison with, say, Istanbul's Blue Mosque would not have been too far-fetched.

Both Crossness and Abbey Mills are nevertheless referred to as "cathedrals of sewage". Not - most definitely not - mosques of sewage, despite the resemblances. I'm sure the Victorian designers had no intention of denigrating Muslim art or culture with their appropriation of Islamic decorative themes for their sewage pumping stations: it was just what was fashionable at the time. I doubt Edward Said would have agreed, though.

I think it's fair to assume that any campaign to reconstruct the Abbey Mills minaret towers would be a non-starter nowadays.

Don't you know that Israel is responsible for all our afflictions? Israel is involved in all the crises of the Arab and Muslim world, including 9/11. […]

This is not only the opinion of a small group of people. There is a lot of technical and scientific evidence. For example, on 9/11, two towers were hit. Each tower was hit by one plane. The fuel of a plane burns at 850° C, whereas steel melts at approximately 1,500 degrees. Therefore, the fact that a plane hit the building does not explain its collapse. […]

There is a strategic plan to divide the already divided Arab world. The plan is to establish the Greater Israel, and to give it regional hegemony. This is the plan that they pursue vigorously.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is recovering following an operation to remove a cyst from his right ankle, though there is a chance that the condition could recur, lawmakers said Tuesday, citing South Korea's spy agency.

Kim received the operation between September and October by inviting a foreign doctor into the communist country, according to Lee Cheol-woo of the ruling Saenuri Party and Shin Kyong-min of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy.

The two lawmakers made the comments to reporters after a closed-door parliamentary audit of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in southern Seoul.

The NIS said that there is a chance that the condition could recur due to Kim's obesity and frequent inspection tours, according to the lawmakers.

Disappointingly prosaic - though of course it's an interesting comment on the leadership's real belief in North Korean health professionals, outside the rhetoric, that a foreign doctor was felt necessary.

October 28, 2014

Comedy genius Sacha Baron Cohen has created arguably his most brilliant satirical character yet – the commie-tragic buffoon Russell Brand.

The comic creation – criticised by some who claimed Cohen was mocking people with narcissistic personality disorder – won millions of followers with his heart warming portrayal of a man suffering from delusions of grandeur.

One independently minded Guardian book reviewer aside, the entire staff of both The Guardian and the BBC were taken in by the Russell Brand character. He was granted audiences with news editors, publishers and TV producers. His opinion was sought out by Parliamentary Select Committees and quangos set up to combat drug addiction and over crowding in prisons. He regularly held court on issues of politics, economics and global warming, with people far more knowledgable and experienced than himself. And yet, incredibly, everyone was taken in....